I just finished doing a comparison for another site on the best online guitar lessons.
As I was going through the lessons, styles, topics, instructors etc. for all the different sites out there I started to realize just how little difference there is in fact between many of these guitar websites, pending your current skill level.
So I had to break it down some what like a scoring system.
The features I compared:
Price: Of course you cannot do a comparison of anything these days without taking price into consideration. How ever this was the least weighted part of the entire comparison since only $5 a month separated the different sites.
Lesson Quality: This was a big one. Since it’s so cheap today to make multi screen video and HD recordings I figured this was the standard for all online lessons, surprisingly it is not yet though.
Styles Taught: Again, this is used as a differentiator by a lot of different sites out there but truthfully I don’t know how many people are signing up to JamPlay to learn some abstract styles.
Teachers: It’s nothing to have 50 different teachers doing lessons for your site since the cost is so low. All you need is a back drop, a couple of cameras and then the video can be sent to someone who does the editing.
Bonus & Practice Features: There are a few key features you need here (backing tracks, scale and chord charts/tools, metronome and tuner). Some sites have a long list of bonus features although I don’t know that many of your members would be using them.
So what was my conclusion? There are a couple of really good sites out there (primarily JamPlay and GutiarTricks) but they’re very evenly matched when it really comes down to it.